


between where we were and now

by redluxite (wordstruck)



Series: VLD One-Shots [18]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-S7, S7 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 22:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15672303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordstruck/pseuds/redluxite
Summary: (A fight they still haven’t talked about. An aftermath that still feels unsteady, uncertain. Shiro looks at Keith and thinks about all the things that have changed him, changed them both – all the things they’d gone through. All the things Shiro had suffered, only to open his eyes and see Keith right there to save him.He thinks about how Keith had opened his eyes this morning and Shiro hadn’t been there.)The other boy is looking at him now, expression still a little hesitant. But Shiro can see something in wide, bright eyes; a tiny, fragile tether. He recognizes it, because he feels the same.





	between where we were and now

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write out a quick warm-up fic and Twitter voted for a post-S7 Sheith thing so here we are! It was _not_ quick, as all these other I-just-wanna-scribble-something-short fics I do tend to go. But hey, here you go!
> 
> This fic leaves a lot of things out, tbh, bc as always my focus is on Shiro and Keith and the things they need to settle between them. It's not meant to deal w a lot of things anyway, mostly just their feelings. Because these idiots are in love, we all know they are.
> 
> Unbeta'd and will retrospectively be edited as needed.

* * *

 

Shiro actually expects him to be asleep when he opens the door.

He’d been in Keith’s hospital room earlier, checking up on him one more time before he heads off to do some politicking and deliver his speech. _You’re our symbol of hope,_ Sam Holt had told him, lips quirked up in familiar amusement. His children greatly resemble him, Sam.

He’s still not quite used to it – being captain of the Atlas, the commanding officer of the Garrison’s defense force. Being the head of Voltron was one thing when there were four other Paladins beside him, sharing the weight, and Allura besides. But now the focus of all these people had been on him as he’d stood on the stage to deliver the memorial address.

There’s a dull twinge in his chest when he thinks about it. He tries not to.

But now, speech over and done, diplomatic duties set aside for later, Shiro finds himself standing uncertainly in the hallway outside Keith’s hospital room. When he’d been here this morning, Keith had still been asleep, still recovering from the battle and the crash-landing. The nurses had just changed the bandages on his head.

(There is a deeper ache in his chest, a bloom of splinters and ice in his lungs as he remembers – the shattered feeling of watching the Lions plummet to Earth, the helplessness; the tremble in his hands as he’d reached the Black Lion, the last one, and pried open the hatch, begging the universe _please, no—_ )

He snaps himself out of that line of thought and reaches for the doorknob. Keith is fine, Keith is alive and being treated and—

“Shiro.”

—awake.

Shiro freezes at the threshold, door halfway open. Krolia and Kolivan are nowhere to be seen, although Shiro knows they’d come in after he’d left. Keith is awake, sitting propped up on pillows, Kosmo curled over his legs. Shiro’s eyes skitter from the bandage over his head, to the ones on his arms, then back to Keith’s face. The other boy sits there and looks at him, similarly searching.

They stand at an impasse for a few moments; Shiro doesn’t quite know what he wants to say first, and Keith just watches him expectantly. Slowly, eventually, Shiro smiles and closes the door behind him. He moves to the foot of the bed, reaches out to scratch Kosmo behind the ears. The wolf whines happily.

It’s Keith who breaks their silence first.

“Nice speech out there,” he says dryly, one corner of his mouth curling up.

Shiro disguises a disbelieving snort with a cough. “Didn’t think you’d watch it.”

“And miss the first public address by Captain Shirogane of the Atlas?” Keith is _definitely_ hiding a smirk now, mouth pinched and eyes bright with mischief. Shiro rolls his eyes and taps him lightly on the head as he moves to sit down beside Keith, on the other side from his wolf.

“At least I didn’t stumble over anything,” he quips, tipping his head up to the ceiling. “And my voice didn’t crack. Too many ways I could have messed up.”

He sighs, then looks to the side a little to glance at Keith, only to be caught off-guard by the fond way Keith’s looking back at him. The corners of his eyes are crinkled and his smile’s gone all soft, and Shiro has to abruptly look away. He hopes he’s not blushing.

“You looked good out there, though,” Keith admits after a few moments. Shiro feels Keith settle back against the pillows. “In full Garrison military dress and everything. Very leader-like.”

Shiro huffs out a laugh, shaking his head. After years in casual clothing or Paladin armor, the Garrison uniform had felt very – odd. Stiff and scratchy; not sitting well over his skin. It’s hard for Shiro to imagine he’d once worn it every day for years.

The thought brings something else to mind, and his laugh carries. “ _You,_ though,” he says, shifting a little on the bed. “Seeing you in the cadet uniform again was… weird. I don’t think it suits you anymore.”

( _It never did,_ he thinks quietly to himself. The cadet uniform had always looked ill-worn on Keith, like he was playing dress-up at someone else’s identity. Like he’d never quite settled where he was.)

Keith’s expression shutters, just a little, and his gaze cuts away. His lips turn up in a not-quite-smile. “Yeah, well.” He picks at his blanket. “I’m not a kid anymore, either.”

“True.” Shiro looks Keith over again, a little more closely this time. At all the lines of him that used to feel like they’d been drawn in pencil, so transient. He looks at Keith and thinks about how he stands now, how he holds himself, like he takes up more space in a room – like he’s not afraid to take up more space, like he’s stopped being unsure if it’s allowed. It makes him a bit wistful. “Though I still remember the punk-ass brat who stole my car and needed me to bail him out of juvie.”

He expects Keith to – laugh, maybe; threaten to hit him with a pillow. Make some quip about how Shiro had been such a goody two-shoes, back then.

Instead, Keith just buries his hand in Kosmo’s fur, still with that not-quite-smile. He’s still looking away. Shiro watches him and something sparks in his mind, a _maybe,_ an uncertain realization. He purses his lips as he considers his next words.

“Keith,” he says, softly.

The other boy stubbornly keeps his gaze on the bed. Kosmo whines, nudging at Keith with his nose.

(It makes Shiro crack a smile. _The more things change..._ )

He changes tack, reaches out and clamps a hand down on Keith’s head. Ignoring Keith’s yelp of protest, he – gently, carefully – ruffles Keith’s hair. It’s gotten pretty long now, but this, it suits him.

“I am _trying,_ ” he says, enunciating each word, “to tell you that you’ve changed, and I like it.”

Keith glares at him from under Shiro’s arms. Shiro grins back at him, unrepentant.

“Yeah I still remember you back when you were a brat,” he continues, smooshing Keith’s hair around, mindful of the bandages. “But I know you’re different now. I’ve _seen_ you change, Keith. You’ve grown up, and not just physically. You’re—” and here he breaks off, suddenly unsure. Keith is too many things now, for Shiro: decisive, mature, reliable; breathtaking in a lot of ways, although Keith’s always been breathtaking for Shiro.

“I’m proud of you,” he says, finally, and his smile softens. He withdraws his hands. Tries not to wonder if he’d imagined Keith leaning in just a little, as if chasing his touch.

But—

(A fight they still haven’t talked about. An aftermath that still feels unsteady, uncertain. Shiro looks at Keith and thinks about all the things that have changed him, changed them both – all the things they’d gone through. All the things Shiro had suffered, only to open his eyes and see Keith right there to save him.

He thinks about how Keith had opened his eyes this morning and Shiro hadn’t been there.)

The other boy is looking at him now, expression still a little hesitant. But Shiro can see something in wide, bright eyes; a tiny, fragile tether. He recognizes it, because he feels the same.

If that last battle has taught him anything, it’s that all these things he has, he could lose at any moment.

“Keith,” he says, softly. His left hand lifts; the backs of his fingers lightly touch the scar on the Keith’s cheek. Shiro takes a breath and thinks about how he might not be doing this, sitting here, with this firebright and beautiful boy looking at him in the way Shiro feels, like love.

Because it is, because he does, because – “I love you.”

Keith keeps looking at him.

“I think I have,” Shiro goes on, “for a long while now, although I never realized it. Because I never thought about how it made me feel to be able to reach out and have you there. You are a grounding force, and a lifeline, and I’ve never been more terrified of something more than I am of the thought of losing you.” And here his hand clenches, briefly, at the memory again of watching the Lions fall and thinking _no, no, not them not him—_

Careful fingers gently wrap around his wrist. Keith leans into his palm, eyes closed, smiling faintly. Shiro breathes out and tips forward, pressing their foreheads together. His grip tightens and he feels the scar under his touch, his fault, his fault, how much pain has he caused Keith all this time but Keith had still said—

“I love you, too.” Stunning eyes open to catch Shiro’s gaze, and Shiro has to wonder how it’s taken him so long to realize he’s in love with Keith when his eyes have always reminded Shiro of the inexorable pull of the cosmos, of galaxies. When Keith makes him feel like there are constellations under his skin, in his lungs, in his heart.

“I know,” Shiro says, grinning hard enough that his cheeks hurt. “I heard you the first time.”

And Keith’s expression twists into a pout, and he pulls away a little, readying himself to snark back. Which, of course, is when Kosmo decides he’s had enough of being ignored. The wolf butts his furry head in between them, whining and nudging at Keith’s hand, breaking them apart, half-clambering into Keith’s lap.

“Okay, okay, okay—” Keith says, leaning back before his pet can hit anywhere painful, and the sight of it all makes something unspool inside Shiro. There’s a tickling sensation at the back of his throat, and when he opens his mouth, he starts to laugh, bright and full and easy. He claps a hand over his mouth to try and stifle it, shoulders shaking.

“Shut up,” Keith says – or tries, but then Kosmo shoves his nose in Keith’s face and makes him sputter, and then he’s laughing too. Both of them are, doubled over and almost wheezing. Shiro shakes his head and looks up to see Keith choke on a laugh, all pink cheeks and mussed-up hair. He’s calming down a bit, one hand keeping Kosmo at bay while he makes a face at his wolf. Shiro’s struck by the sudden thought that he wouldn’t mind having this, them, for as long as he’s able.

“Keith,” he says, softly, once and again.

When Keith looks up, Shiro leans in, hand coming back up to cup the other boy’s cheek. And maybe Keith’s been waiting for this, waiting for Shiro to realize, because his eyes are closed and his lips part lightly as Shiro tips his head to kiss him.

When they pull away, Keith opens his eyes to look at Shiro, and he smiles.

“Took me long enough?” Shiro hazards, eyes crinkled in fond amusement.

“Yeah,” Keith says, and he’s still smiling when Shiro kisses him again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! ^ ^ Come say hi on social media – I'm [@okw_tr](https://twitter.com/okw_tr) on Twitter and [okwtr](https://okwtr.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. You can check there for ways to support my writing!


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